2016-07-02

There's no doubt about it, this is my slowest year quilting-wise.
Still, the first quilt of 2016 is finally finished (and gifted) and might just be my new favourite. Hope you like her, too:

Ever since I finished this quilt for my Grandma, I was planning on sewing a more scrappy version, so when we agreed with my sister-in-law that her new quilt would be made mainly from my stash, with no restrictions on colours, I just had to choose those granny squares.

I had to buy some more black fabric for the background, but all the colourful squares are from the fabric I'd had on hand. Some of it was in scraps big enough for several squares, some just for one, old and new favourites, bought online or on holiday abroad, or received as gifts... Remembering the people and places related to particular fabrics made the piecing even more fun.

And then the quilting - I didn't even realise how I'd missed it until I sat down to it. It was such a pleasure to just relax and doodle away. The quilt is quite big, slightly more than 200x200cm (close to 80"x80"), but somehow it was really easy to quilt. I started in the middle and kept the pattern going in a loose spiral, just trying not to sew myself into a corner.
I love the texture this type of quilting gives the quilt after washing.

For the back, I had the idea to create one big granny square. I really wanted to sew this from my stash too, and since my stash fits into one not very big Ikea box, with half a yard being the biggest fabric cut, my colour options were quite limited. Still, I hope it's not too shabby, and there is some Australia and some Wales in there, too, so at least it's made of some happy memories. Also, the centre is my last piece of the fabric I used in the first quilt for my sister-in-law - do you think she'll notice? ;)

I might have mentioned it before, but it's really hard for me to name my quilts. Also, while quilt names sound good to me in English (maybe because I'm not a native speaker of English) they sound really cheesy in Polish. So, unless my sister-in-law reads this post, she'll never know that the secret name of her new quilt is summer night.